DID COLPLAY RIP-OFF EX-MICHIGAN BAND?
So did Coldplay rip-off the former Michigan/now Brooklyn-based band Creaky Boards for their new “Viva La Vida” song? Idolator is reporting that Coldplay leader Chris Martin actually caught a performance by Creaky Boards at the CMJ music fest last October. The guys in the band were thrilled, of course…until they heard the new track, which…
ROCK CITY ’08: THE WONDER TWINS RECAP
You’ve probably already seen and read enough about the Rock City Fest to feel like you were there (if you, in fact, weren’t). Instead of totally rehashing info you can find elsewhere, though, I thought it would be fun to recap via a conversation with my twin sister, D’Anne (who I’ve been told I don’t…
BILL KOGGENHOP, R.I.P.
We’re saddened to report the death of bass guitarist Bill Koggenhop, a longtime member of the local Detroit music community, who lost a very short but heroic battle with pancreatic cancer on Friday, June 13th. Koggenhop was a member of local reggae favorites, Immunity, as well as the jazz group Kog’s Cats and the Carribean-influenced…
GOOD FOR THE GO…?
A name in the local music rumor mill at the moment is our friends, the Go. Something major may be on the horizon for them in the near future. But as Eleanor Bron said repeatedly to the Fab Four in Help! when she was warning them about the iminent danger they faced: “I can say…
Hooking up
As spring turns to summer in Detroit, the riverfront becomes lined with anglers, their baited hooks sunk into the water, trying to fool fish into taking their last bite. Fishing’s always been a popular warm-weather pastime in the city. The Detroit River snakes for miles along the city’s edge, and its banks have hundreds of…
Home = heart
Thomas Wolfe said it most famously: “You can’t go home again.” But you can sure as hell try. I’d highly recommend it, even if the joke behind going anywhere this summer for $200 or less is that, with the cost of gas, what could have been a round-trip ticket from Detroit to, say, Las Vegas…
Flipping out at Cedar Point
The ultimate ride this summer could very well start up on the edge of the atmosphere where you can see the endlessness of space above and the earth below. We’ve got two ambition-fueled adventurers — a retired French army officer and a Hollywood stuntman — spending millions to get special balloons up 25 miles so…
Cabela’s big game
For the summer pleasure-seeker, Michigan brims with natural attractions. From the Sleeping Bear Dunes to the Pictured Rocks, from storied Beaver Island to the remote wilderness of the Porkies, the Wolverine State is loaded with outdoor attractions to rival any state in the union. So it comes as something of a surprise that one of…
Hard day’s night
I-75 rolls, straight ahead, Jack, almost directly into Michigan’s gut. High strips of blemished brown and rushes of lush green, illuminated as if in some kind of jungle war dream, lift slowly in the distance and reflect off the windshield in the lazy midday sun. Then, abruptly, from a blur of whizzing Ford trucks and…
Love, hate and then there’s …
Two weeks before the Von Bondies’ first Detroit gig in four years, we caught up with leader Jason Stollsteimer in the group’s tour van, which was headed from Portland to Seattle. A cell phone on a traveling van isn’t the most opportune environment for an in-depth interview (the static was sometimes unbearable and we lost…
Blight buster
Things change, and they don’t.Take John George and Motor City Blight Busters, the nonprofit group he founded two decades ago.The story of his group’s origins has been told before, but it deserves telling again as the organization prepares to celebrate its 20th anniversary next week. Back in the late 1980s, George was the part owner…
Night and Day
WEDNESDAY • 11 TRUE COLORS TOUR BIG, GAY MUSIC FEST For the second year in a row, a bevy of musicians will hit the road flying the rainbow flag to show support for the LGBT community. She Boppin’ Cyndi Lauper, the tour’s creator and producer, headlines along with the B-52s and Rosie O’Donnell, with appearances…
To dump or not to dump?
Wow, your response to Shitty Boyfriend In The Midwest was spectacularly lacking in empathy. It doesn’t seem like it occurred to you that his girlfriend is probably depressed. She sounds isolated and is in a new environment—her behavior and personality have changed, so she’s obviously having trouble adjusting either to the area or to the…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Take the bait
Detroit has several small, home-grown shops selling everything needed to fish. Though many bait shops have closed in recent years, including longstanding ones like Fisherman’s Marina near Harbor Island and newer ones like Detroit Bait & Tackle on Bagley in Corktown, a handful are still out there, providing a mom-and-pop source for bait, tackle and…
Book report
John Conyers invites Scott McClellan to testify.
Summer Festivals
JUNE FESTIVALS DEARBORN ARAB INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL JUNE 20-22 • DEARBORN In its 13th year, this annual festival takes over Warren Avenue in east Dearborn for three days of good, clean, family fun and a celebration of Arab culture. Old-school festival attractions — including a giant Ferris wheel — will be in abundance, as well as…
Scores and more
DSO’s “8 Days in June” fest offers feast for the ears.
Motor City Rides
Cetan Clawson and his utilitarian 2001 Ford Escape.
Penal grandeur
“Yeah, this is McGill. This is dumb ass McGill. I locked the keys in 406.” That’s a prisoner transport van, and on a recent weekday morning, officer McGill paces the parking lot of the G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility in Jackson because he left his keys in the ignition, with his gun and an inmate…
Truckin’
What is music to the ears of children can be annoying cacophony for adults. The looped Casio keyboard-sounding renditions of “Turkey in the Straw,” “Pop Goes the Weasel” or “She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain” interspersed with a parroting electro-vox squawk, “Hello?!” announces the passing of the mobile ice cream vendor. These are not the…
Summer Guide 2008
Cabela’s big game by Michael Jackman Where the great outdoors is stuffed, mounted and displayed indoors. Hard day’s night by Brian Smith 24 hours in a far-off land known as Flint. Flipping out at Cedar Point by W. Kim Heron Up and down 400 feet in 19 seconds. Home = heart by Bill Holdship Finding…
Down the lazy river
Man, it’s sure nice to get away, even if away is not that far, and the time gone isn’t all that long. I’m thinking this as I paddle a rented kayak along the languid Pine River, which runs through the little town of St. Clair and into the much bigger St. Clair River connecting Lake…
Rules of the game
Want a terrible, confusing threesome? Set no ground rules.
The tipping point for public transit
As gas prices soar, motorists are becoming straphangers again.
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Sink or Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #175 David Wilcox — Boy in the Boat (Stony Plain) :: I still can’t slog my noggin around the fact that the former frock-coated, long haired, handlebar mustachioed Teddy Bear who once had one of the most visually arresting looks in all of rock ‘n’ roll is now a…
Faces and their places
Some of the faces are immediately connected to Detroit. People as diverse as Rosa Parks, Eminem and former Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. Others are well-known, but their ties to the Motor City will come as a surprise to many. People like actor Harry Morgan of television’s M*A*S*H, newsman Mike Wallace and the late…
Unsafe sex
Michigan’s HIV numbers show young African-Americans hit disproportionately hard.
From now on
Forget post-9/11! Get ready for the post-Obama era.
Couch Trip
Pistol Whipped Junction Films For more than a decade, a big opening weekend for a Steven Seagal movie has been if two idiots fight over the lone copy at Blockbuster — late Saturday night, after every last Police Academy movie has been rented. But the reasons fans stopped caring and turned the one-time action hero…
Letters to the Editor
It can’t happen here I read with some interest “Can it work here?” (Metro Times, June 4) by Larry Gabriel. Minneapolis’ success at sustaining its neighborhoods and attracting businesses in minority areas didn’t happen overnight, as the article pointed out. But the key to the whole program is investment. Minneapolis, a much more racially diverse…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
In the Flesh
At the Fillmore Sunday night, the Raconteurs were definitely tighter and — dare I say it? — more professional sounding than they were during a packed free show at Amoeba Records store in Los Angeles shortly after the release of their debut Broken Boy Soldiers album. The group perfectly blended all of the classic rock…
Southern accents
At Baker’s, most of the dinners, which include two substantial sides, range in price from $9 to $12. Baker’s fried chicken is unusually light and crisp on the outside and moist and juicy on the inside. The same holds true for the signature catfish dinner. Moving away from fried fare, the old-fashioned turkey dinner may…
Mister Lonely
A community of whacked-out celeb impersonators form a community in a remote Scottish enclave, and dream of putting on the world’s greatest show. Our main faker is Michael (Diego Luna), a cipher who’s scratching out a living playing the King of Pop for spare change, until he meets a fetching Marilyn Monroe (the splendid Samantha…
Kid fu
Though it boasts a calculated, standard-issue plotline about achieving whatever you want as long as you believe in yourself, Kung Fu Panda is hugely entertaining, gorgeously animated and expertly cast, with Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman doing some of their best work in recent memory (no joke). A delightfully drowsy Black voices potbellied Po, the…
Reprise
After a witty opening where would-be novelists and BFF’s Philip (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman-Høiner) drop their manuscripts into the mail, we’re treated to fantastical imaginings of their impending success (riots in Africa, the despair of religious leaders), reality settles in to chart the real-world fits and starts of their budding careers. When…
You Don’t Mess with the Zohan
Adam Sandler may not actually wear a costume in You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, but his Israeli commando is a superhero nonetheless, albeit a comic one. Gifted with superhuman speed, agility and strength — the ability to leap down small buildings, and stop a bullet with his nostril — Zohan Dvir is as weary…
The Foot Fist Way
Teaching the Korean Martial art of tae kwan do, instructor Fred Simmons (Danny Mcbride) treats every aspect of his life as if it were mortal combat. This petty, macho blowhard is still dining out on an early ’90s championship, growing flabby and pathetic. When he learns about the shenanigans of his trophy wife (Mary Jane…
A Man Named Pearl
Pearl Fryar makes the case that gardening isn’t solely the bastion of the wealthy. With a boundless energy that belies his age (he’s now 68), this blue-collar, self-taught artist has created a three-acre topiary garden so extraordinary that its presence has put the small town of Bishopville, S.C., on the map. The son of sharecroppers…
